1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to distributed customer systems, and, more particularly, to methodologies and concomitant circuitry for the delivery of personalized services, including a personal presence, to individual customers.
2. Description of the Background
Traditionally, in a service setting such as a guest in a hotel/motel or a patient in a hospital, the guest or patient has been provided with basically the same standardized room-based services, that is, personalized options are virtually impossible to arrange for an individual guest or patient, especially prior to check-in. It is also true that a guest-stay or patient-stay, in terms of room-based services, is viewed as an independent event from one stay to the next. There is virtually no attempt to "remember" the preferences of the guest or patient from prior stays so as to make the next stay more personalized, and therefore more enjoyable. Nor is there any real effort to modify preferences of a guest or patient based upon choices during the present stay. Finally, there is no viable mechanism to capture the preferences of the guest or patient with respect to room-based services prior to check-in.
To understand the limitations of the traditional approach to guest or patient services, consider the following enhanced services (heretofore unavailable) in a hotel scenario. The personalized preferences of an individual guest are captured and stored, either upon reservation or based upon selections during past visits, so that after check-in, as the guest enters his hotel room, he hears his favorite music playing over a stereo in the room. Also when he turns the TV on, he sees a personal welcome message for him in Spanish, his native language. With the remote TV control, he accesses the hotel's restaurant guide. Further, he is able to call into view the maitre'd of a particular restaurant to discuss menu selections, and then reserve a table as well as make a menu selection for dinner later that evening. Then he calls into view the concierge, again on the TV, to ask some questions about the other hotel services and area attractions. The conceriege extracts an area map as stored in a database and displays the map on the guest's TV. Next, the guest picks up the phone to call his spouse to inform her he has arrived at his hotel room. The phone has been programmed for speed dialing to his home phone number, and he is so informed upon picking up the phone. At the same time, in the background, guest inquiries and selections are being utilized to adapt the prior list of personal preferences so as to store the most up-to-date information about the guest.
After dinner, the guest decides to watch a movie on his in-room TV. He browses the selections in the movie guide from a personalized list of recommendations--based upon his preference list and selections from past hotel stays, comedies are his interest so the movie guide lists comedies first. He chooses and begins watching a movie, but he stops the movie before it is finished so he may retire for the night. In the morning, the guest is awakened with his regular news broadcast on TV. The breakfast he had ordered the night before via a menu displayed on his TV arrives, and as he completes breakfast, he is able to finish watching the movie from the previous night. After the movie, a stock ticker is automatically displayed on the TV because the guest had expressed an interest in being kept informed about financial markets. Again, any choices by the guest that may impact on the list of personal preferences are used to automatically adapt his list of personal preferences. For instance, suppose that during the stock ticker display, the guest decides to watch another movie, this time a musical. The list of personal preferences might then be modified so that musicals are listed first, then comedies, for the next time the guest desires to watch a movie.
Upon check-out, the guest's list of personal preferences, as adapted during his visit, are stored in a database for use during a later hotel stay.
Other possible services not discussed in the illustrative example above, but which would be made available depending upon the guest's interest, include: (1) send and receive e-mail and faxes via an in-room connection using the guest's laptop; (2) establishing an in-room Internet connection; and (3) play interactive games with other hotel guests over the TV, with a live host at a remote hotel location joining in the action to encourage the players and add a "realness" dimension to the game.
As may now be readily appreciated from the foregoing discussion, the prior art is devoid of teachings or suggestions for collecting personal preference information about an individual--prior to check-in, upon check-in, and during the individual's stay--and adapting the personal preference information during individual's stay to update the individual's personal preference information for present as well as later use.